Artikler (på engelsk)

Music and the Russian Revolution (Socialist Review, Issue 430, December 2017). “The social and political turmoil surrounding the First World War and the wave of revolutions across Europe produced some of the most radical modernist music. Sabby Sagall outlines key figures in the movement and looks at debates among revolutionaries about ‘working class culture’.”

Zanchevsky, Zakrevsky or Zakovsky? By Sheila Fitzpatrick (London Review of Books, Vol.38, No.4, 18 february 2016). Review of Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time (Cape, 2016, 184 p.). Dansk udgave: Tidens støj (Tiderne Skifter, 2016, 202 s.). “The Noise of Time is a brilliant impersonation, both as a novel and as a portrayal of the ‘real’ historical Shostakovich.”

A concert of early and rare Shostakovich. By Fred Mazelis (World Socialist Web Site, 3 December 2013). “The First Symphony, the earliest composed of the works on the program, was an instant success when it premiered in Leningrad in 1926.”

The enigma of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony. By Verena Nees (World Socialist Web Site, 12 September 2012). “A memorable concert took place 70 years ago. On August 9, 1942, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, the “Leningrad”, was performed in the city of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. At the time, the city had been besieged by German troops for more than a year and its inhabitants subjected to relentless starvation.”

Shostakovich. By Louis Bayman (Socialist Review, Issue 349, July/August 2010). Review of Simon Behrman, Shostakovich: Socialism, Stalin & Symphonies (Redwords, 2010, 128 p.). “It is Behrman’s achievement that his book places Shostakovich’s biography within such a wide-ranging analysis of music, 20th century history and cultural debates, and marries the excitement of great music with that of radical action.”

A complex socialist composer. By Alex Miller (Frontline, Vol.2, No.7, June 2008). Review of Laurel E. Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2005, 458 p.). “… a balanced and sober biography of a highly complex man and artist, who was neither a closet anti-Communist nor a simple dupe of the Soviet bureaucracy.”

The sound of a Soviet tragedy (Socialist Review, Issue 309, September 2006). “Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich was born 100 years ago. Simon Behrman looks at the music of an artist whose life was intertwined with the fate of the 1917 revolution.”

Shostakovich, the musical conscience of the Russian Revolution, Part One + Part Two (In Defence of Marxism, 20-22 December 2006). “Alan Woods attempts to show Shostakovich as he really was: a great Soviet artist who used music to express the terrible and inspiring events of the period in which he lived, a man of the people who believed in the possibility of a better world under socialism.”

The sound of a Soviet tragedy (Socialist Review, Issue 309, September 2006). “Simon Behrman looks at the music of an artist whose life was intertwined with the fate of the 1917 revolution.”

Shostakovich: Revolutionary life, revolutionary legacy. By Harry Patterson (Weekly Worker, Issue 365, December 21, 2000). “A rich legacy of recordings of his finest works has appeared throughout the year, many of them of an earlier, pre-digital, pre-stereo vintage. It is worthwhile assessing some of these important historical recordings in the light of what we now know about this most complex of musical figures.”

The legacy of Dmitri Shostakovich: Clarifying a confused debate. By Fred Mazelis (World Socialist Web Site, 7 April 2000). “A quarter century after his death, interest in the works of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich has never been greater, while the debate over the relationship of this music to the history of the twentieth century continues to rage.”